Leaves by John Simmons

Author:John Simmons
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Urbane Publications Limited

12 Looking out

It was one of those sultry summer twilights, waiting for rain. A dusk much like the previous six, except that this one had a real threat of thunder. Another hot day had gone, another day of blue sky and no clouds save the puffy white streams behind the passing airplanes, another day without rain. But at last a change was in the air, new feelings were being expressed in the rising wind, while the sky slowly stanched the light of day, spreading a brown stain into the bulging clouds as evening advanced. It would rain soon, and everyone looked out from their windows with a mixture of irritation and expectation.

But while they waited, with restrained, idle impatience, the day’s last flies and gnats became feverishly busy, as if in sudden realisation of their imminent extinction. The spite which the humans barely suppressed, seemed to find full expression in the gnats, and they swirled in crazy circles under the tree, around the flowers, below the eaves, beneath the lamps, and over any people out walking.

With its slow, inevitable summer motion night began to fall, until people became no more than shapes drifting along the street, and speech, a cough, laughter all came springing out of the half-light in eery illuminations of sound. From further up Ophelia Street the small dark shapes of children flitted like restless ghosts in pursuit of an invisible ball, shrieking and giggling their hysterical pleasures in defiance of, perhaps because of, the deepening shadows. From the open windows all along the street came television noises, murmuring on the sighing wind; and, floating and swooping like a glider, a piece of white paper made its way above the pavement until it became entangled in the iron railings outside one of the houses.

In 3 Ophelia Street, on the ground floor, Joe Wheatley sat at the wide-open window on a wooden chair, sleeves rolled up past his elbows, idly watching the world go by. Inside, in the gloom, it being light enough for Joe at the window and not too dark for the rest of the family watching television, figures were placed in a crescent pattern around the artificial brilliance of the grey and white picture, saying not a word. Joe was not interested in the television programme and was anyway too sticky to sit cramped in his armchair. He preferred to gaze out of the window, to see what was happening. Not that anything intriguing had caught his eye: nothing had happened, nothing was happening, and nothing was likely to happen. It was one of those nights after a long arid spell of weather for long arid reflections about nothing in particular, and the sheer monotony of it all infected everything. For a time he had watched a group of boys playing football in the street, even though himself unable to see the ball except in sudden flashes, until the boys became bored and tired and abandoned the game. So Joe sat there immobile, staring rigidly into the coagulating darkness.

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